The Flu 1/2 (23 page)

“Can I ask if someone told you to do that?”

“Lie?” Bill shook his head. “No. I did that on my own.”

“Why?”

“There wasn’t another choice. I thought about it.” Bill sat up and leaned back. “What good would it do to go and tell everyone that it looks like Anchorage is pretty much, excuse the pun, sunk. They don’t need to hear that. That’ll scare people. People don’t need to be scared, they need to feel hope. They get their information from the media, and I, as the media, am not going to be the one who frightens them. We may be out of options, but who’s to say, someone else may have options?” Bill softened his voice. “Who’s to say, out there, somewhere, there isn’t still hope?”

* * *

Lodi, Ohio

Six military trucks were parked in what appeared to be a blockade around the Lodi Elementary gymnasium when Mick and Patrick arrived.

“Cots?” Patrick questioned Mick when he saw the soldiers, wearing gas masks, unloading one truck.

“Looks that way,” Mick stated and moved toward the open gym door.

“Hey, Mick, maybe they’re making this an official medical place. What do you think?”

“I don’t know. But I’m about to find—”

“Hold it,” a soldier approached Mick, stopping him with his rifle. “No one gets in there.”

Mick rolled his eyes. “Yeah, right. Move.”

“Sir, I’m not joking.”

“Neither am I. I’m the Chief of Police in this town, now let me in my school.” Mick pointed to his waist and the badge he wore attached to his belt. “Now can I get in there?”

“Hold on,” the soldier stepped aside.

Mick waved his hand at the soldier and walked into the gym with Patrick. As soon as he did, his questions were partially answered when he heard Lars’ voice barking out orders.

“I’ll need those over there,” Lars pointed across the gym for the benefit of one soldier.

“Lars.” Mick approached him.

“Evening, Mick,” Lars stated. “Patrick.”

“What the hell is going on?” Mick asked.

“I tried to get you earlier, but you weren’t home,” Lars said.

“Did you think to call the station?”

“Yes.” Lars nodded. “I figured I’d wait until I was finished.”

“Finished with…?”

Lars gestured with his hand, “Over here where we can talk.” He walked to where a large table was set up, nothing on it but a brief case. “You are standing in what we are preparing to call the Lodi Medical Aid Station.”

With Patrick listening at his side, Mick waited for Lars to continue. He figured Lars had stopped to think, but no more words came from him. He then wondered if Lars thought the simple one-sentence explanation he gave was going to be enough. If that was the case then Lars had thought wrong. Mick grew impatient.

“Lars, did something happen in Lodi? In Seville, maybe?” Mick questioned. “Why did the government send all these people here?”

“The government didn’t, not really. It was initiated by the CDC.”

“So the CDC sent in the military.”

“Yes...I thought it was best to have an escort while initiating the plan.”

“The plan?” Mick asked.

“Yes, my plan. Actually....” Lars reached for the briefcase and popped it open, “it has been a plan, or rather a theoretical procedure I’ve had in mind for...God...I don’t want to say how many years.”

“So...you brought this in. You’re responsible?” Mick looked around.

“Yes.”

Mick snorted in irritation. “Everyone is nuts enough, Lars. The whole damn town is shut down. People are scared. This isn’t going to help.”

“This,” Lars emphasized, “
is
going to help. And if it is implemented correctly, followed through precisely, it might be the only thing that can save this town from what’s wiping out the rest of the world.” Calming a bit, Lars looked at a confused Mick and Patrick. “Let me give you some cold hard facts about this flu, Mick.”

Mick nodded. “Go on. I heard on the news—”

“Forget the news,” Lars interrupted. “I know this flu that they’re calling the Barrow Flu. Its technical designation is Pascal 435, strain C. It’s strong, and it’s lethal. It has extinction level potential. The news, the CDC, they’ll give you an overall percentage rate. Sixty-five percent chance of catching it, and so forth.” Lars shook his head. “If you are under the age of fourteen I can guarantee you have a ninety-nine plus percent chance of catching this flu. The older you get, your chances decrease. And if you catch it, no matter how old, young, healthy, strong, weak....more likely than not, people will die. For years health officials have been working on ways to beat this flu. It can’t be beat. Not completely.”

Patrick looked even more confused than Mick. “How do you know about this?”

“It’s what I do. I work on plagues and viruses. I monitor them in the world’s deadliest plague region. I watch for anything that can become pandemic. Because if something is going to start it will start in the region in which I work. But no one expected it to begin in some igloo-intensive community in Alaska, that’s for sure...but it did.” Lars took a breath and leaned against the table. “By the time it was discovered, it had crossed the boundaries into populated areas. It broke free. If you think this is the first time this flu has surfaced, think again. This is the fourth outbreak. Only difference is, all four previous outbreaks took place in very isolated locations and were contained and stopped.”

“So you know this flu well?” Mick asked.

“I should,” Lars answered. “Not only was I on site for the last two outbreaks, I...I had this flu. And if you’re curious as to why I didn’t die.... I should have. I didn’t because I implemented a theory I came up with during my studies of the second outbreak. It’s that theory, it’s my survival, that brings all this here.”

After looking around the gym that increasingly became packed with equipment, Patrick had to question, “If your theory is so good, if your plan is so foolproof, why isn’t the rest of the world trying it?”

“It’s too late, too big,” Lars shrugged. “It’s very tricky, the plan. And it’s not a method easily executed, so don’t kid yourself. It’s not a matter of just giving an antiserum; there are steps. And it’s the steps that have to be taken that make it impossible to deliver it to large regions.”

“Hence Lodi,” Mick said. “Population thirty-five-forty.”

“Exactly,” Lars nodded. “The town is small enough to try it on. And the proper supplies can be brought in for a population this small. So we’re going to try it. The CDC wants to see if it will work. Not that it will make much of a difference for the rest of the world, but there’s hope for at least one town.”

“Lodi.” Mick breathed out. “What will you do?”

“As I said, there’s a protocol,” Lars explained. “First, every single person will be given a flu vaccine. This is a special vaccine, designed for various strains of swine flu, because that is what this flu is primarily based upon. This will shave the communicability rate from ninety-five percent down to seventy-five percent. Next, everyone must be informed about every detail about this flu, including symptoms and so forth. That is extremely vital. See, if you get it, in almost all cases, your blood turns to poison. Once that poison stars affecting your organs, there is no turning back. But….like with me, I was able to stop that poison. It can be stopped. Only,” Lars exhaled, “only if caught within five to ten hours of the first symptoms.”

Patrick smiled at the news. “So if the person gets to you early with the flu, you can save them.”

“From turning septic, yes, blasting them immediately with high doses of antibiotics,” Lars answered. “They still stand a risk of succumbing to the pneumonia. But it’s not as high as succumbing to septicemia.”

Raising a clenched fist in excitement, Patrick nodded. “I feel better already.”

“Don’t,” Lars stated. “That’s not a big time frame. The smaller you are the faster septicemia claims its victims. Mick, here, if he caught the flu, he could push the ten hours post first symptom. You, Patrick, better see me within seven. Seven hours is not a lot of time.”

Mick understood. “But, Lars, with this plan, he still has more of a chance than anyone else, right?”

“I’m hoping,” Lars responded. “That’s why I’m doing this. Right now Lodi doesn’t really see what this flu is doing. How can they? The biggest worry today was why did the video store close, yet thirty miles away in Cleveland a mother holds her child in her arms, and her worry is, what will she do the next day when her child dies?” Lars’ voice was laced with sadness. “I want to keep the video store worry going. I don’t want some mother in Lodi feeling what that mother in Cleveland is feeling. If I can stop it, I will.” Lars stood. “But we have to move fast on this, extremely fast. Finish setting up and hopefully tomorrow morning start injections. We have a window of opportunity, and I don’t want it to shut on us.”

Mick’s head shook slightly in confusion. “I don’t understand. What window?”

“Window meaning before it gets ahead of us,” Lars said. “I want to get prepared before the flu strikes here.”

“It has already,” Mick told him. “Mr. Carlson has—”

“No.” Lars stopped him. “Mr. Carlson has allergies. I checked him. There isn’t a single case of flu in Lodi.”

Patrick blinked in surprise. “Not a single case?”

“Nope. Why do you think we’re doing this? We’d pull in Seville and some other Medina towns, but they have the flu.”

Slowly Mick’s hand raised as he stared at Lars. “Are you telling me, four miles away they have the flu, but we don’t?” Lars nodded. “Is there any way of stopping us from getting it at all?”

“The flu has to run its course,” Lars explained. “It will lose potency, but it still has to die out.”

“But...is there any way to stop it from running its course through Lodi, sparing us?” Mick asked again.

Lars chuckled. “Mick, you’d have to keep anyone, and I mean anyone, from coming in. And short of putting up an iron wall around Lodi, there’s no way to do that.” His smile faded as Mick walked away. “Mick, where are you going?”

Mick turned around, walking backwards quickly as he spoke. “That flu is not getting in here, Lars. Not in Lodi. Because I’m putting up that iron wall.”

* * *

If Diggins’ Drugstore didn’t have apartments on top of it, it wouldn’t have been the highest point in town. It wasn’t that high, but it was high enough for Mick to see what he waited for.

Arms crossed, staring east, Mick listened for the sounds of it first. A familiar sound, faint and rolling in louder. And then he saw them. The sight reminded him so much of that first night at the funeral home for Sam’s viewing, the dancing lights. But this time they moved straight, right down the highway, four wide, hundreds deep. Mick watched them approach Lodi and spread out. East. West. North and South. A few would ride in to access the riverbanks.

A small town needed the protection only a strong iron fist could deliver. The call for help was made, and with a vengeance it arrived.

* * *

Mayor Connally waddled some as he walked, but it wasn’t a bad back or legs, his age, or his weight problem. He wrestled with his blue robe tying it to cover those smiley face boxers he wore as he made it down his steps.

Rudely awakened, Mayor Brad Connally called it. Finally asleep after dealing with his wife’s obsession over the news and paranoia over the virus, rest was welcome; he didn’t even mind that odd Hell’s Angels dream he had for some obscure reason. He did mind the single hard knock on his front door that stirred him, and the loud, deep resonating call of his name that snapped him awake.

“Mayor Connally?” Mick yelled out.

“I told you to shut the hell up. The sedative is working nicely on Elise.” With the final tug of his robe’s belt, and a huff of irritation, Brad Connally straightened his gray hair and emerged from the staircase. “Michael Owens, I swear to God, this better be important, Chief of Police of not.”

“It is,” Mick stated. “I have to fax these to the Governor. I need you to sign them.” Mick laid two documents and a pen on the sofa table.

“What the hell are these?” Brad asked.

“The first is an order approving two hundred and sixteen temporary deputies as border patrols. You have to sign this to give them the immediate authority to maintain law and order. Then,” Mick slid the next paper to him, “you have to sign this proclamation stating that we are in a state of national emergency and by the authority vested in you, you are declaring your own martial law.”

“I’m what?” Brad was taken aback. “What’s happened?”

“Nothing, yet, sir. And that’s the way I want it.”

“I’m not understanding, Mick.”

“We don’t have the flu,” Mick stated seriously.

“Who? You and me?”

“No. The whole goddamn town of Lodi. We don’t have the flu. And that’s the way I want to keep it. If we can keep it out, Lars says for four weeks, we will have beaten this bug and not lost a single life to it. The world is dying....” Mick’s voice dropped. “Let’s not let Lodi.”